Application of Constacyclic codes to Quantum MDS Codes

Quantum maximal-distance-separable (MDS) codes form an important class of quantum codes. To get $q$-ary quantum MDS codes, it suffices to find linear MDS codes $C$ over $\mathbb{F}_{q^2}$ satisfying $C^{\perp_H}\subseteq C$ by the Hermitian construction and the quantum Singleton bound. If $C^{\perp_{H}}\subseteq C$, we say that $C$ is a dual-containing code. Many new quantum MDS codes with relatively large minimum distance have been produced by constructing dual-containing constacyclic MDS codes (see \cite{Guardia11}, \cite{Kai13}, \cite{Kai14}). These works motivate us to make a careful study on the existence condition for nontrivial dual-containing constacyclic codes. This would help us to avoid unnecessary attempts and provide effective ideas in order to construct dual-containing codes. Several classes of dual-containing MDS constacyclic codes are constructed and their parameters are computed. Consequently, new quantum MDS codes are derived from these parameters. The quantum MDS codes exhibited here have parameters better than the ones available in the literature.Comment: 16 page

Quantum MDS Codes over Small Fields

We consider quantum MDS (QMDS) codes for quantum systems of dimension $q$ with lengths up to $q^2+2$ and minimum distances up to $q+1$. We show how starting from QMDS codes of length $q^2+1$ based on cyclic and constacyclic codes, new QMDS codes can be obtained by shortening. We provide numerical evidence for our conjecture that almost all admissible lengths, from a lower bound $n_0(q,d)$ on, are achievable by shortening. Some additional codes that fill gaps in the list of achievable lengths are presented as well along with a construction of a family of QMDS codes of length $q^2+2$, where $q=2^m$, that appears to be new.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure